It’s been a rough one– this morning.

 

Our early hours have been infected by their bickering and I’m worn from raising my voice and speaking their middle names. It’s not even time for mid-morning snacks, and I am ready for bedtime prayers.

My Bible lays open on my lap next to the nursing baby. I need it so desperately right now. My spirit aches for its words of peace to reach deep and calm my angst. Yet every time I look down to read I am distracted by another quarrel needing to be refereed, or I’m poked in the eye by a toddler.

I’ve had enough, and I issue a mandatory reading time. They grab their books of choice, and plop down on opposite sides of the living room.

 

 

I lower my gaze back down to my Bible and begin to speed read, unsure of how long their attention will last on the pages. That’s when his little voice breaks my concentration, “Jesus died, Mama? Just like in your Bible?”

I glance at the children’s Bible in his hand, opened to a page bearing Jesus’ broken body hanging on a tree.

“Yes Babe,” His question tears me away from my own reading. “He had to die. Do you remember why?”

“Because He loves us.” he replies.

I smile.

“Yes, but now He is alive again!” I keep the conversation going.

His brow furrows as he sorts it out in his mind. “He is in Heaven now?” he asks me.

“Yes. And if we ask Him to be our friend forever, then when we die a long, long time from now, we get to go be with Him in Heaven with Him!”

“But Mama…” he begins to respond.

And this is when his voice cracks and his bottom lip begins to quiver.

“I don’t want to die.”

No matter the circumstance or context, when for the first time words of their own death pass from the lips of your child, your own heart stops beating for a moment or two.

 

 

When I’ve read it in the Word, “Always be ready to answer everyone who asks you to explain about the hope you have,” I never foresaw it falling into this scenario.

My boy and his inquisitiveness, how do I satisfy his curiosity while “rightly handling the word of truth.”? {2 Timothy 2:15}

 

 

We are in the garden one afternoon when I find myself grappling for a sufficient answer to yet another one of his queries. My toes brush green shoots freshly emerged from the soil. We are checking on the strawberry patch. No berries yet.

He looks up at me with blue eyes glinting in the sunlight from behind those impossibly long lashes; the ones that all the old ladies swoon over. “Is Jesus in the garden?”

The question seems silly, but I know he’s serious; and I know there is a world of curiosity and confusion lying beneath the surface of his inquiry.

 

 

“Yes Honey,” I begin to thread together an answer, praying that it might fit into the empty spaces of his fledgling perceptions. “Jesus is in the garden. He’s everywhere really.”

This question is part of a series that he’s been asking me lately. Is Jesus in my closet? Is Jesus at church? And when he hears the laundry machine thump-thumping our clothes around from downstairs, Is Jesus in the basement?

And finally, recently, he’s been asking me if Jesus is in our hearts. This one catches me by surprise the first time he asks it. Why do these questions always seem to sneak up on me? “Yes,” I explained to him, “Jesus lives in our hearts when we ask Him to come in and be our friend forever.”

 

 

I see him mull over these huge Biblical truths in his tiny realm of understanding. He rolls these thoughts around in his mind as he continues with his play. I wonder if I’ve explained it sufficiently, or if I’ve only left him more confused. 

It’s not these questions of “Where is Jesus?” that most challenge me. It’s when he begins to tie loose ends together and come to his own conclusions.

 

 

One day as we are walking out the front door to the car, he wanders toward the road– too close to it for my comfort. I pull him near and explain the dangers of going in the road, that he could be hit by a car and die. I scour my brain for more words to help him grasp the severity of this.

“You could die and be gone, like the bugs when you step on them.” “Oh ok.” He tells me, and climbs into his carseat. Again I ask myself if my explanation was sufficient; if it will be enough to keep him away from the road.

On another afternoon not long after, he spots a gentleman crossing the road. “Oh Mama, he needs to be careful, or he’ll get dead!”

He’s been curious about death lately.

 

 

He has also had a preoccupation with what Heaven is like, and if we will go there.

I see his thread of thoughts beginning to weave together into a fabric of faith. And I worry as to whether I’m giving him the tools he needs in order to understand these truths I swear he’s too young to grasp.

Sometimes I am afraid to answer his questions. I forget that when they handed me my firstborn son under the glowing lights of that laboring room, they not only handed me the title of Mama, but also the titles of Teacher and Guide alongside of my husband.

 

 

“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul…You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 11:19

Maybe it’s as simple as that. Maybe it’s as easy as keeping these conversations going, spurring them on by pulling out the children’s Bible, and sharing them in a way that excites and engages them—through story. Maybe it only takes making them a normal part of the conversation permeating our home.

Perhaps if I just keep answering his questions while drowning my words in prayer, the pieces will come together in his young mind to form a portrait of grace and gospel.

 

One morning I come across this passage and it stops me. My eyes discontinue their scroll down the page and linger on hope inked onto thin paper. I absorb them into my soul as I copy them down on a page in the journal I keep for my firstborn.

“My son, this is my prayer for you:

‘Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.’ 1 Peter 1:8-9″

Perhaps this is the beauty of “childlike faith”, that my son can believe without seeing. That he has questions, but still he accepts that which yet holds an element of mystery. That he understands far less about Jesus and grace and the gospel than I do, yet he can pray simple prayers full of faith; ones unhindered by his questions. He knows without a doubt that Jesus loves us and keeps us safe, and that is enough for him. Maybe It is I who have a thing or two to learn from his faith.

And maybe– just maybe– it is ok if my humble explanations only leave him with more questions, because I never want him to stop asking. Because when he asks those questions, it forces me to pursue the answers. And in this way, he is teaching me.